Brussels, 30/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the report of Gérard Deprez (ALDE, Belgium) in Strasbourg on Wednesday 29 April, on planned income and spending for the 2016 tax year for the European Parliament, MEPs hope to obtain a draft budget for 2016 that is “realistic but very tight” and which accounts for less than 20% of the European Union's total administrative spending.
According to the compromise obtained, Deprez is pleased that the amount for the European Parliament's draft budget for 2016 will be less than €11.8 million according to the Bureau' initial estimates. The increase in administrative appropriations compared to 2015 will not be above +1.6%.
Due to the threat of terrorism, a one-off donation of €15 million has been planned to strengthen security in Parliament buildings, particularly in Brussels (new reception room, bullet-proof windows, new and more secure badge system etc.). A substantial part of this envelope will go to cyber security and another 25 posts will be created to ensure improved building surveillance, explained the rapporteur.
The draft budget for 2016 highlights the need to increase resources for Parliamentary work. The rapporteur affirmed that “creating 20 new posts in the Parliamentary committee secretariats should enable the Parliament to exercise genuine control over delegated and implementing acts resulting from our legislative work”.
The European Parliament also decided to increase expenses for the MEPs' secretariat (these costs have not been adapted since 2011). Deprez explained that “this measure did not obtain a broad consensus”. Nonetheless, the agreement explains that the amount needed to finance this increase will not be released until after a new satisfactory regulation has been drawn up by the Bureau to increase the number of qualified assistants and to improve the supervision of local assistants by reducing them in number.
Deprez also announced an agreement on a future new regulation on subjects involving written questions. He concluded that “Accounting, through the 'ranking' systems for MEPs, of the number of written questions submitted, leads to a number of difficulties that need to be settled. 20% of MEPs are responsible for more than half of the questions posed. In many cases, the goal is to monopolise the first places in the rankings. In a lot of cases, these questions are poor or even pointless. Gauging the performance of an MEP is not just a question of quantity but of quality, which involves content”. This is why the Bureau and the Budgets Committee have agreed to call on the Conference of Presidents to ensure implementation of a new regulation on the issue of written questions, which will put a stop to the incredible expansion of them and which in too many cases are poor or even pointless (e.g. what is the Commission going to do to defend the interests of the Union on the moon?). It was also agreed that buildings policy would be subject to another examination in the autumn, particularly with regard to the Konrad Adenauer Building (KAD) in the more general context of a medium-term strategy. (Lionel Changeur)